Angry farmers besiege Thai PM's office

Updated
Tue Feb 18 02:09:58 EST 2014

Photo

Thai farmers hold bales of rice with protest placards as they demonstrate against the government's repeatedly delayed payments for rice submitted to the pledging scheme at Suvarnabhumi airport in Bangkok February 16, 2014.

AFP

Hundreds of angry rice farmers swarmed around the Thai Prime Minister's temporary office in Bangkok, threatening to storm the building if Yingluck Shinawatra refuses to speak with them.

The farmers say they have not been paid for crops sold to the government under a national rice-buying scheme, which helped Ms Yingluck's Puea Thai party win power.

Live television pictures showed farmers climbing over barbed wire fences and barriers at the Defence Ministry compound in north Bangkok where Ms Yingluck has set up temporary offices.

The protesters pushed back a line of riot police, who retreated from confrontation, but did not enter the building.

"The prime minister is well-off but we are not. How are we going to feed our children? I want her to think about us," one farmer said.

"Farmers are tough people, they wouldn't normally speak out but they are at the end of their tether."

Farmers' representatives later met ministers, but when finance minister Kittirat Na Ranong came out to speak to the crowd, he was pelted with plastic bottles.

The government hopes to sell about 1 million tonnes of rice through tenders this month to replenish its rice fund and is also seeking bank loans to help it pay the farmers.

The Government Savings Bank has said it had lent $US153 million to the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC), which runs the rice scheme.

It did not say what the money would be used for, but some depositors, apparently hearing on social media that it would be used for the rice payments and would therefore help the government, took their money from the bank on Monday.

"Today the bank's clients took out around 30 billion baht. Most clients who withdrew were in Bangkok and the south. Around 10 billion baht was deposited. This doesn't impact the stability of the bank," Worawit Chalimpamontri, president of the savings bank, told a televised news conference.

He says there would be no more interbank lending to the BAAC because the loan was "misused". He did not elaborate.

The 30 billion baht withdrawn represents about 1.6 per cent of total deposits, according to calculations.

Months of ongoing protests

The farmer's protests come as thousands of demonstrators surrounded the government's headquarters in the Thai capital, seeking to oust the premier.

Those protesters view Ms Yingluck as a proxy for her elder brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, a self-exiled former prime minister, who was ousted during a 2006 military coup.

"We will use quick-dry cement to close the gates of Government House so that the cabinet cannot go in to work," Nittitorn Lamrue, leader of the Network of Students and People for Thailand's Reform, said.

Protesters moved concrete barriers to block entrances of the Government House and poured cement over the barriers in what they said was a "symbolic gesture" to show the building was closed.

Prime Minister Yingluck has been forced to work from the temporary offices since January.

"There are enough soldiers and police inside Government House to protect the building and the grounds," National Security Council Chief Paradorn Pattanathabutr said.

"The protesters said they will not come inside so we aren't expecting a confrontation."

The election took place on Feb 2 but it was disrupted in parts of Bangkok and the south, the powerbase of the opposition, and it may be many months before there is a quorum in parliament to elect a new prime minister.

The Election Commission has set April 27 as the date to re-run voting that was disrupted but the government says it wanted the much earlier date of March 2.

"According to the law, the House of Representatives must convene 30 days after a general election," Pongthep Thepkanjana, a deputy prime minister, said after a meeting between the commission and government.